


John Watson Knows About Parrots and Squirrels

by Pic_Akai



Series: French 'verse [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-16
Updated: 2012-03-16
Packaged: 2017-11-02 00:25:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/362988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pic_Akai/pseuds/Pic_Akai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greg and John have been dating for six months when Greg makes the decision to introduce John to his kids.</p>
            </blockquote>





	John Watson Knows About Parrots and Squirrels

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sequel of sorts to [Male Bonding](http://archiveofourown.org/works/315554). You don't really need to have read that to understand this; you just need to know that Greg's ex-wife Charlotte is French. I have another idea which follows directly on from this, too, which I'll probably write, but this stands well enough on its own.
> 
> Credit for the squirrel joke goes to M*A*S*H; Hawkeye Pierce relates it in the episode The Most Unforgettable Characters.

Greg had been dating John for six months before he made the decision to introduce him to his kids. 'Dating' didn't really seem like the right word, because half of the time they met was at crime scenes or in the mortuary, and the other half wasn't exactly romantic candlelit dinners and exchanging flowers, but it was the best Greg had. They shared takeaways - though not immediately after a case; that was Sherlock and John's time - and watched the worst films they could find and had some fairly energetic sex, considering their ages (or rather, Greg's age) and that was how they wanted it.

But it was clear that things were starting to at least fall into a pattern, if not to get serious, and Greg wanted his kids to meet the man that made him happy these days. It was going to be the summer holidays soon so he was due to have them for a big chunk of time - he had threatened to quit if he didn't get the holiday, but was fully aware he'd end up at work at some point anyway - and he didn't want to spend that time with them alone, pretending John didn't exist or he was just daddy's friend who happened to come over a lot, especially when the kids were in bed.

So he arranged to have them for a weekend in June, to allow them and John time to get to know each other before the summer holidays.

Charlotte had asked him at least five times if he was serious about John. "Just - are you sure, Greg?" she'd say, sounding worried, as he rolled his eyes, taking a great delight in being able to do that because she hated it but she couldn't see him over the phone. "I do not want them to be introduced to someone who is going to be gone in a couple of weeks."

"Neither do I," he reassured her. "That's why I've waited six months. And," he said the last time, which appeared to be what made her stop asking, "Would you be asking this so much if he was a woman?"

She'd always known he was bisexual and that he'd gone out with men before her. She wasn't homophobic - if she had been he wouldn't have gone near her - but he knew that people sometimes struggled to see things as the same if they weren't used to it. It wasn't out of anything nasty, just a deep-rooted thought that because there were two cocks involved, everything else would be different too.

"How are you feeling?" he asked John just before he left to get them.

John wrapped his arms around him in response, and kissed him before he spoke. "I'm fine," he said, sounding it. "It's going to be fun."

"You're not nervous?" Greg asked.

"No," John said simply. "I can't be, because if there were two of us there'd be enough nervous energy to get Battersea working again."

Greg's shoulders slumped a bit. "Is it that obvious?"

"You're completely transparent," John said helpfully. "But," he paused to kiss Greg again, and let this one linger a bit, "I think you're allowed to be. Besides, the kids'll probably be more interested in me than you, at least for the first five minutes."

Greg took a breath, then nodded. "You're right," he agreed, hugging John tight to him for a second and then releasing. "It'll be fine."

John smiled at him indulgently. "See you later."

Greg was much more talkative on the journey back to his, Louis and Amélie buckled into their high-back boosters in the back seat. Usually when he picked them up he'd ask questions and let them chatter away to him, but he couldn't quite manage it today. He pointed out about half a dozen locations on the way from Charlotte's to his, most of which they already knew about anyway. He had to stop himself at one point from saying, "And there's where my last murder scene was." He talked about the weather and football and ice skating and whatever else he thought of that they enjoyed, but didn't ask them any questions.

He'd already told them on the phone that they were going to meet his boyfriend today. At five they were young enough that they didn't have too many preconceived ideas, thankfully, and it had been a fairly short conversation. Louis had wanted to know if that meant they were getting another stepdad like Ethan and whether they would get a step-maman, but it hadn't bothered them. Still, he didn't know what they could have thought up in the meantime.

As it happened, of course, everything was fine, because it was John and his kids and they were all people he loved, and they got along like they'd known each other all their lives.

"Hello," John greeted the twins as they entered the flat ahead of Greg. They were supposed to take their shoes and coats off at the door, but Amélie had spotted John's blond head over the top of the sofa and she was off, Louis at her heels.

"Hi," Amélie replied brightly. "Are you John?"

"I am," John said. "You must be Amélie." Amélie nodded. "And you're Louis?" Louis nodded more slowly. "It's nice to finally meet you."

"My maman has a boyfriend too," Amélie told him. "Well he was her boyfriend and then they got married, so he is our stepdad now. And now you are daddy's boyfriend."

"All right then, kids, shoes and coats off," Greg interrupted at this point, slightly wary of where that conversation was going and not wanting to scare John. When the kids acquiesced easily however and he actually looked at John, the other man was smiling at him a little bit, that fond smile which said he was being a prat again. He could live with that.

* * * * *

They took the twins to a nature centre that afternoon, which they always enjoyed. Louis asked Greg to put on the nee-naw on the way, which he had been informed by a classmate that all police officers had on their cars, and Greg had to gently let him down by explaining that this was his own personal car, so it didn't have lights or a siren.

"You are not a proper police officer then," Louis retorted, and Greg and John shared a smile before they stifled laughs.

"It's not the first time someone's accused you of that," John said under his breath, with a grin.

As usual, when they arrived Amélie and Louis both wanted to go in different directions, so they got a map and planned out a route together. They started with the birds, and Louis was looking intently at a pair of brightly-coloured Macaws.

"Did you know that parrots are the only bird which can bring food to their mouths with their feet?" John said.

"How did you know that?" Amélie demanded. "You didn't even look at the sign!"

John raised his eyebrows over her head, and Greg said, "We always have to read the signs." John nodded in understanding.

"It's just something I knew," he replied to Amélie.

"What else do you know?" Greg asked, as the twins between them began to 'read' the sign for the parrots, clearly saying the words they did know and making up the rest judging by the first letter.

"Hmm. Parrots have a hundred and sixty bones?" John was leaning back casually on the barrier in front of the parrot enclosure, nonchalant about his amassment of parrot-related knowledge.

Greg's eyebrows drew in for a moment. "Where on earth did you pick this up?"

John shrugged. "I knew a few vets in uni. Sometimes to keep us awake during revision we'd devise quizzes for each other, so we got to learn a bit about animals and they got to learn a bit about humans by accident. Did you hear the joke about the squirrel?"

Greg shrugged, and Louis and Amélie looked up from their reading, interested. John thought for a moment then said, "Okay, so there's a medical student who's taking an exam in his first year of university. He's training to be a doctor," he added, for the twins' benefit. "He's finding it really hard to think, and he gets to a question and his mind just goes blank. It asks how many bones there are in the human hand. So he starts muttering to himself out loud, 'How many bones? How many bones in the hand?' And then he hears this little voice whisper, 'Twenty four.' So he looks all around, and he can't see anyone speaking, but then the little voice whispers, 'Hey, over here,' and he looks over and there's a squirrel sitting on the windowsill. And the squirrel holds up his hand and points to it and says, 'Twenty four bones'. So the student writes it down.

"So after the exam, he runs to the library to check, and then he finds out that there are actually twenty seven bones in the human hand! And he's really angry, so he goes looking all over the campus for this squirrel, and finally he finds him again, in a tree, and he shouts up, 'Hey, you bas- you bad squirrel!'" John ignored Greg's snort of laughter at his attempt to clean up his language. "'You lied to me! There are twenty seven bones in the human hand, not twenty four!' And the squirrel goes, 'Oh, sorry. I thought you meant how many bones in a squirrel's hand.'"

Greg laughed. Amélie looked blankly at John for a moment or two before she seemed to realise that the story was over, and then looked back at the sign. Louis looked thoughtful, which was fairly par for the course.

They made their way around the birds at a good pace, long enough to read each of the signs and stare hopefully for a bit, waiting to see if any of the animals would do anything interesting. They were just about to embark upon the Woodland Den when Louis patted Greg's arm and said he needed to go to the toilet.

"I need the toilet too!" Amélie announced, without the fear of social disapproval that discussions of intimate manners might bring that her brother had.

They reached the toilet block and Greg went to walk into the men's, trusting that both of them would follow, but quickly realised that Amélie was going off to the side.

"Amélie! Where are you going?"

"I'm going to the toilet, daddy." Amélie stopped.

"It's this way."

"No," she said, and pointed at - oh, god - the women's. "This is my toilet. You and Louis go to that toilet."

"You can't go in there on your own," Greg said. "You know when you're out with me, you come in the men's. When you're with maman you both go in the ladies'." He stepped closer to Amélie, aware that they were having this debate across several feet of space and a few other parents were starting to glance over, looking annoyingly amused.

"I go in the girls' toilets at school," Amélie said. "I am not allowed to go into the boys' toilets. Louis goes into the boys' toilet with Ethan."

Greg squashed down a momentary, ridiculous urge to punch Ethan for getting involved in parenting his children. Logically he knew it was good for them, better to have three stable adults, good for them to see a happy relationship at home, and all that bollocks. Emotionally he wanted his children to be his and Charlotte's and no one else's.

"Well, that's only because Ethan is there," Greg said. "We don't have any women with us so you can't go in there. Just come with me, like you usually do."

Amélie shook her head determinedly. "I am too old to go into the boys' toilets."

Greg looked, helplessly, at John, who was sitting on a wall a few metres away. John gave him an expansive shrug in return, and Greg had the feeling John was enjoying this, at least a little bit.

"Well…" Greg considered it. Realistically there wasn't much chance of anything dangerous happening to Amélie. There were individual cubicles, she was well trained not to use the hot tap when in public in case it came out scalding, and she was generally quite sharp. And he supposed if anyone did try anything, she'd scream loud enough to alert the whole nature centre, so at least he'd know.

"All right then," he said through a sigh, and Amélie smiled, satisfied. "But you go straight in and out, remember to lock the door, wash your hands properly, and if you have trouble with the lock shout for someone to get a member of staff because you're stuck. And come straight out and go to John if we're not out yet. He's just there. And…remember to check that there's loo paper before you start to go. And if you have any problems come straight out and tell John."

"Yes, daddy," Amélie said in a tone he knew, just knew, she'd picked up from listening to him speak to Charlotte. He closed his eyes for a brief second, then nodded and walked into the toilet with Louis. Amélie fairly skipped off to her own designated toilets.

He peed as fast as he could, worrying all the time over what if she started a conversation with a stranger, or what if she got stuck in the loo, or what if she did use the hot tap - he should have reminded her not to do that - or what if… He tried to hurry Louis along too, but Louis didn't ever do well if he was hurried, and he was still a little bit shy about weeing in public toilets anyway - certainly not something he'd got from Greg - so he couldn't do much.

But of course when they got out Amélie still wasn't done, and he was just halfway through saying, "She's been a while, hasn't she? Maybe I should-" to John when she came out, looking thoroughly unbothered about the whole issue.

"I could not reach the hand dryer," Amélie informed him. "But I used toilet paper to dry my hands instead and then flushed it away."

He praised her ingenuity and breathed deeply in order to settle his heart back down to something less than racehorse pace. The twins led the way back to their route, and John took his hand for a moment and squeezed. "All right?"

Greg nodded. "They say it gets less scary when they get older because they're not so fragile any more," he said. "But it just gets worse the more independence they want. At least newborns generally stay where you put them."

* * * * *

It was later that evening, when the twins were asleep and John and Greg were enjoying a beer, some rubbish on the TV in the background, that Greg was mulling over the events of the day and just thinking about how nice it had been when he suddenly came to an awful realisation. 

"Oh god," he said out loud. "I've just thought. What's going to happen when she's thirteen and she gets her first period if she's here? I'm going to go into meltdown. She will, she'll have hysterics." He groaned, imagining it.

"Well," John said calmly from where he was leaning against Greg's side, "She will have a very capable and mature father who will tell her anything she needs to know and support her however she needs." Greg gave him a look. "And failing that," John continued, "You'll have a doctor to prescribe a hot water bottle and some Ibuprofen, and whatever she fancies for dinner."

Greg tried to keep up the sceptical look but found it too hard; he smiled, taken by the care in John's voice. And then it caught up with him that John was imagining that he would be there, in eight years' time, still with Greg and thinking about the kids, and he could do nothing else but kiss the man.

**Author's Note:**

> I adore concrit.


End file.
